SALEM — From the moment Jeremy Fraser was born, two weeks late, Kristen LaBrie knew there was something wrong with him, she told jurors from the witness stand yesterday.
"He was very small, in comparison to my first child," the Salem mother said, referring to her older son Matthew. "He looked, not pink, he was kind of gray, not a lot of movement or noise."
LaBrie, charged with attempted murder, child endangerment and assaults on Jeremy, spent about a half-hour giving jurors a detailed narrative of her relationship with Jeremy's father, Eric, and Jeremy's various disorders before the Lawrence Superior Court jury was sent home for the day.
But will her testimony, which will resume this morning, convince jurors that she was a good mother who became overwhelmed by the role of primary caregiver to a profoundly disabled and ill child?
And will it overcome the testimony of her own expert witness, who disclosed during cross-examination that LaBrie had been prescribed the anti-depressant Celexa and was filling her prescriptions regularly — at the same time she wasn't filling Jeremy's?
Dr. Frederic Krell, a psychologist called by defense lawyer Kevin James, testified that LaBrie, 38, was a "depressed person who was overwhelmed with having to cope with a significantly impaired child who now had a life-threatening illness."
"She was largely alone, psychologically, and she had a history of difficulty asking for help and getting services, and as far as I know was struggling to keep her son in school," Krell continued.
But prosecutor Kate MacDougall — who had only just been given Krell's final report yesterday morning by the defense — questioned the basis for those conclusions, getting Krell to admit that LaBrie didn't fit the legal definition of mentally ill.
LaBrie had started therapy with a social worker in 2007, and in October of that year started on the anti-depressant.
"In October, 2007, she wasn't filling Jeremy's prescriptions, was she?" MacDougall asked Krell.
"Evidently not," he responded.
MacDougall also confronted Krell with a notation on one psychological evaluation of LaBrie, the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, indicating that she had self-reported an "unusual" number of symptoms, which, the company that scored the test warned, could indicate she was exaggerating in the face of criminal charges. Had the psychologist considered the possibility of Munchausen Syndrome by proxy, in which a parent might secretly make a child even sicker in order to make herself appear more heroic?
Krell rejected the suggestion by MacDougall, saying that stopping the medications made Jeremy look better, not sicker.
Meanwhile, a visiting nurse contradicted portions of the testimony of LaBrie's sister — including the dramatic claim that LaBrie was forced to cut off her hair because the demands of caring for Jeremy were so great she couldn't find time to groom herself.
On Wednesday, Elizabeth O'Keefe, LaBrie's sister, also told jurors that Jeremy was like "a little wild animal."
But that's not what nurse Jean Martin told jurors yesterday.
LaBrie "always presented well-kept," said Martin in response to a question from MacDougall. "She was well groomed, well organized."
"Did you ever notice the defendant cutting off all her hair?" asked MacDougall.
"No," said Martin.
As for Jeremy?
"He was very, very smart and very personable," Martin said. "He loved to touch," whether it was her nylons or a blouse or her hair. "The minute I came into the house, he'd take my hand and lead me into the kitchen and want a cookie."
"Sometimes, he just wanted affection," Martin testified.
And if LaBrie had any concerns about side effects of the three chemotherapy drugs, Methotrexate, Mercaptopurine and Prednisone, she never raised them with Martin during her weekly visits.
Martin said LaBrie did tell her that she was refusing to put Jeremy on an anti-seizure drug called Depakote and later, that she did not want to give him the Tamiflu he had been prescribed — and told her exactly why, claiming they would make Jeremy sicker.
And LaBrie never used the special "numbing cream" that was supposed to be applied to Jeremy's skin over a catheter before her visits so that it wouldn't hurt when Martin drew blood for tests.
But when LaBrie took the stand, she detailed the care she had given her son since his birth.
"He was allergic to pretty much everything," said LaBrie. He had a diagnosis of microcephaly (a small head) from his first pediatrician." He started having febrile seizures at 9 months. He was covered in eczema that didn't respond to treatment. He was "moody" and "colicky."
By the age of 2, he had a "solid diagnosis" of autism.
"So we definitely had autism plus something they called pervasive developmental delay," LaBrie continued, one hand resting on the judge's bench, the other gesturing.
"The care was constant," she said. "Whatever went in for a feeding came out, projectile," she said. "It was formula after formula after formula for a while."
LaBrie began describing the day she learned of Jeremy's cancer. He had a little cough that morning but otherwise seemed fine, so she put him on the bus to school.
A few hours later, a teacher called. "She said that Jeremy's fingernails were blue and he was having difficulty breathing, and they felt they should call an ambulance."
LaBrie said she thought that maybe he was just cold, but "of course I said call the ambulance because you're not going to not do that."
Jeremy died in 2009 at the age of 9.
Courts reporter Julie Manganis may be reached at 978-338-2521 or at jmanganis@salemnews.com.
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